Three sets of interactions with crazy-ish people on the subway last month during the middle of the afternoon:

1) Right when I get on the train to go into work and am on what had looked like a fairly safe and empty car from the outside, there's (two) (young) (black) guys without masks on just standing around almost like right in the middle of the car, just talking in the loudest voices about nothing really at all, like how this one girl "stinks" but someone still goes after her.

2) In the next car as I walk in and sit down, this (thin) (old) (black) lady turns around and looks at me, and I start to think that she doesn't like how I sat like 2-3 seats away from her, since that must be too close for her, and then all of a sudden I can see that she has crazy eyes, and she's like, "Why do you have a gun? What is a white boy like you doing, bringing a gun onto a train full of black people?"

3) In the next car I sit down and read a book, and then after a few stops this (older) (black) guy without a mask gets on and lumbers up the aisle, and as he passes me he whacks my foot and is like, "Sorry," only he leans in like 2-3 feet away from my face in order to say it, and then he sits down like 2 seats from me, still without a mask, and when I give him a quick glare, he's like, "What, I said sorry," and so I get up and go down to the other end of the car to go sit there, and then a number of stops later as the train pulls out I see him lumbering down the platform that we're leaving, only now he has this mask on, and it's like a ski visor with one flat clear plastic scuba mask end and with raised-up edges with foam on the end where it goes and sits on your skin.

Two interactions with my one (Togolese) coworker at the resthome:

1) Before dinner one day in the dining room, she says she likes my note (i.e., my note "If you want a short walk home after dinner, WAIT HERE," which I hide in some fake plants and I pull out every shift and leave out on the table for this one resident with poor short-term memory who I escort home every night after dinner, and who would otherwise maybe wander out into the lobby and create a long walk home for herself if I'm not there right when she finishes dinner).

2) "One dollar," she's like, when she's replenishing treats by the coffee and juice machines in this one resident lounge room, and my one (Chinese) (Filipina) coworker and I both stroll in around the same time to get a quick cup of coffee this one late afternoon.

Conversation with my mother: Social media.

Last month when I was on the phone with my mom, she asked me if there was any snow on the streets near me, and when I said that there was, she said that she thought so, since she checks the live webcam of a baseball stadium in my city, and she could see snow on the street there.

. . .

A long time ago, my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair) remarked that he likes to see how older people use stuff online, since they really don't know the ways that people are supposed to use it.

He had said that someone he knows's grandmother once got online and onto Facebook, and she friended her grandkid and went through their account and liked every single post that they had on there, she just went through it all in one day.

Resthome remiscences: General store on the Great Plains.

Last month at the resthome, the one resident who's a retired school nurse was reminiscing about her family.

By the time she got to college, her father's general store was running into problems since it was the 1950s and it couldn't compete with the supermarkets, so she thought that she couldn't go to college like her older siblings had, but it turned out that somehow they could manage it, and she did end up going.

She then clarified that the store was part of a smaller chain that's now gone, but it wasn't a supermarket, and that her dad got into it through family or relatives or whoever who were in the business.

She also said that her brother had come across a reminiscence of the store in a small town newspaper from the area, and that someone had mentioned that their dad's store would always put a toy in the bottom of the grocery bags, and her brother was like, "I did that during the Depression!".

She also also said that Mennonites would come in and buy big swaths of one type of cloth that they would use to make clothing for everyone, so that everyone wore the same thing; it was always a lot of cloth, but of just one fabric, so that it was just tons and tons of the same thing.

Elaborate set-up conversation about the coming stimulus check.

Last month at the resthome after the Senate voted on new stimulus checks, I asked my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker if she had heard of it, since she's been keeping tabs on stimulus check discussions whenever they've been happening.

So, I asked her if she was aware of the Georgia Senate elections, and she wasn't, so I filled her in about them and how they let Democrats control the Senate, and then I filled her in how Kamala Harris as Vice President can cast a tie-breaking vote, which she did in this case.

"So," I was like, "Ralph Warnock, Kamala Harris, they gave you this check."

"And...?", she was like.

"Well," I was like, "Do you like black Americans now?"

A small piece of niceness.

Last month at my one assisted living client's with disabilities, she reminded me to run taps when I got home since we were going into a freezing spell and that that would keep the pipes from freezing, and then later that night after my shift, she texted me a reminder again, which was very fortunate since I had already forgotten about it.

Conversation with a resthome coworker: Troubled times.

Last month at the resthome, I asked my one (skeptical) (Mexican) coworker how her family back in Mexico was doing, and it turned out not good.

Though last year some of her family got Covid, now a different part of her family got it, and her niece had to be put on oxygen.

And, I clarified, and it was oxygen and not a ventilator, and we both agreed that at least she's not on a ventilator, but still.

Then, we were talking more, and she was shaking her head at how awful the world is and how you just don't know what's coming, so I told her the story about our one (Tibetan) coworker with an inappropriate sense of humor poking at me and asking me what she should do with her future, and how I was like, "I don't know, the world is really f*cked up right now."

And, she laughed, and I could tell that that was because she knew that it was true.

There's something very funny, in just saying that out loud.